Who’s Who in the Ancient Alien’s Bible: Part Two

Since the idea of supernatural deities is nonsense IMHO, perhaps there’s another explanation behind the more likely as not reality molehill hidden inside the traditional religious mythological mountain. That explanation could revolve around an extraterrestrial flesh-and-blood alternative.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

WHERE’S WHERE

Heaven: The name of God’s spaceship, or starship if you prefer.

Hell: The brig, located off-ship, probably on Earth, where one could be exiled to if need be.

Eastern Mediterranean (Israel; Land of Canaan; the Levant; Near East; Palestine): That part of terrestrial geography assigned to the officers and crew of the Spaceship Heaven as their area of responsibility. Contrast that with Zeus and company assigned the Middle Mediterranean; Odin and company responsible for the Norse lands; and the Great Spirit who looks after the North Amerindians; and so on.

Garden of Eden: Paradise was actually a terrestrial R&R spot for officers and crew of the Spaceship Heaven. God first had to expel human trespassers after they learned or overheard too much extraterrestrial knowledge forbidden to terrestrial ears. Later on however God gave Adam an interstellar ride in his Spaceship Heaven.

Towel of Babel: To disperse in quick-smart fashion the local population to the four corners of the globe, or even within the region, would have required considerable transport infrastructure.

Sodom & Gomorrah: The twin cities were destroyed via fire and brimstone from above, leaving no trace whatever after-the-fact. The obviously high tech weaponry might have been incendiary bombs or even nuclear weapons, but it certainly wasn’t any sort of destructive weapons technology common to that era.

WHAT’S WHAT

Miracles: High technology in action. As the late Arthur C. Clarke tended to put it, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, at least to those not technologically savvy. Among the high tech examples are the medical ones – healing the seriously sick and handicapped; resurrecting the very recently deceased; enabling very elderly women – over the hill and off the pill – to become fertile and bear offspring.

Food: Speaking of high tech miracles, what does one make of manna from heaven; loaves and fishes that multiply; wine from water? This almost makes you think of the food replication device used in Star Trek.

Noah’s Flood: A whole textbook could be written about the impossibilities of the Biblical tale of the flood and Noah’s Ark. The amount of water required can’t be produced. The boat isn’t near large enough to house and feed every species that would need to be given shelter. The crew isn’t sufficient to look after their charges. But, with just a bit of high tech tweaking, what if the Ark wasn’t for an actual universal disaster but a potential one, a real possibility given those high tech star wars, or wars between the various factions of deities (think of the ten year battle between the Titans and the Olympians; or what must have raged between God and Satan or will rage as per the forecast of Revelation; or the battle between the Frost Giants and the Norse deities; or all those aerial wars depicted in those ancient Hindu texts). Now instead of having entire forest worth of plants and all those animals requiring food and waste disposal, on board, substitute a botanical seed bank and a zoological equivalent, a repository of frozen eggs and sperm or embryos or genetic materials, etc. No need for food; no waste products; not much maintenance (crew time) required, and easily room for everything in the space allowed for the Ark in the Book of Genesis. The issue of course is that all of this is high tech way beyond the capabilities of the great unwashed of that era, the locals or natives. 

Burning Bush: This is an example of extraterrestrial hologram technology in action, employed to awe the local primitives, in this case Moses.

The Ark of the Covenant: Apparently a high and rather dangerous technological device, purpose not really well explained, but obviously more than just a storage box for a couple of stone tablets.

Clouds; Pillars of Fire; Flying Rolls; Star of Bethlehem; Aerial Chariots; Whirlwinds; Ezekiel’s Wheel, etc.: A UFO by any other name is still a UFO, and in most of these depictions, the object, say a ‘cloud’, is an actual vehicle that carries a passenger, more likely as not a Spaceship Heaven shuttlecraft. 

Germ Warfare & Biological Weapons: There are numerous examples in Biblical texts where high tech biological weapons were used against populations (i.e. – the Egyptians, even God’s Chosen People) and individuals like Job.

Transfiguration: Jesus led three of his followers up a mountain, and behold his face had a rather disquieting and unnatural glow about it (much like Moses after his CE3K). In fact Jesus, and/or his clothing, shone with some sort of bioluminescence. To add to this anomaly, Jesus had with him both Moses (long since considered the late Moses who had once been abducted) and Elias (otherwise known as Elijah, the abducted). Further a ‘cloud’ that hovered over this gathering ‘spoke’ to them, one and all, with words that implied that this was God himself doing the speaking. Then the ‘cloud’ vanished like a bat out of hell. Wow! There is surely something strange afoot going on here. By the way, in common with a lot of other Biblical tales, this is repeated several times, in the Books of Matthew, Mark and Luke. In fact, I’d suggest that if you eliminated all of the duplications, the Bible would be 10% thinner!

The Ascension: Jesus departs Planet Earth to take up his new job as First Officer on the Spaceship Heaven, sitting at the right hand of her captain.

Hologram Technology: A very useful ways and means of inspiring awe in the great unwashed. Examples that spring to mind include the ‘burning bush’ and Jesus ‘walking on the water’ and appearing in the ‘flesh’ post execution.

WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

There have been no verified and documented sightings of the main Biblical players (God, Satan, Jesus, angels, etc.) in way over 2000 years. Where are they? I suspect they have gone away. I further suspect God and crew were recalled to home base to stand trial for crimes against humanity, though many, like Jesus, were exonerated, having played no part or role at Sodom & Gomorrah or in the use of biological weapons and waging germ warfare. Satan and his fallen angels were recalled too, probably picked up from exile, to give account for their original mutiny. Perhaps as we read this Captain Jesus of the Spaceship Heaven (or some other interstellar vessel) is boldly going and finding new Garden of Eden locales to R&R in throughout the cosmos.  

CONCLUSION

It is clear that not everything in the Bible can be easily interpreted in an extraterrestrial context, probably because much of the text’s content tends to be rather mundane soap opera of a humans-only nature. That aside, after you take into consideration all the versions, all the translations and associated issues with that, translation and copying errors (deliberate and accidental), embellishments, artistic license, human imagination needed to fill in the gaps, plus the multiple authorship of all the Biblical texts itself, not to forget that the texts weren’t written down till decades, even many generations after-the-fact (it’s like nobody recorded and wrote down today’s news until the year 2112 – many an error would be made), I conclude that the Bible can largely be interpreted not in a supernatural way but rather an extraterrestrial one.

Unfortunately, if I am right, then all your theological baggage of an eternal life everlasting goes right down the drain – maybe not a bad thing if you thought you were Hell-bound, or even if Heaven-bound as the concept of eternal life is actually hellish as you would rather quickly be bored out of your afterlife skull, and you still have infinity yet to come.

Who’s Who in the Ancient Alien’s Bible: Part One

Since the idea of supernatural deities is nonsense IMHO, perhaps there’s another explanation behind the more likely as not reality molehill hidden inside the traditional religious mythological mountain. That explanation could revolve around an extraterrestrial flesh-and-blood alternative.

INTRODUCTION

Erich Von Daniken asked the question “was God as astronaut?” Traditional Christians, Muslims, and those of the Jewish faiths of course answer “No”, God was (and is) a supernatural deity. Those more inclined to be free thinkers pondering realities outside of the religious box, answer anywhere from “Maybe” to “Yes”. If the latter, how might Biblical characters, places and events be interpreted in an ‘ancient astronaut’ context. Who’s who, Where’s where and what’s what?

All interpretations are based on the text of the King James Version of all things Biblical.

WHO’S WHO

God: OIC and captain of the Spaceship Heaven. His real alien name is of course Yahweh, or in the vowelless version YHWH, but I’ll just shorten that to God, a name that all and sundry recognise.

Satan: God’s original First Officer and second in command of the Spaceship Heaven, later exiled to Hell, or at least to Earth, for mutiny. 

Fallen Angels: Fallen Angels are those officers and crew who were in cahoots with Satan in the unsuccessful mutiny against Captain God and who were court-martialed and stripped of their status and rank and exiled to Hell on Earth. 

The Seraphim: Because the Seraphim have six wings, they are probably a separate extraterrestrial race aligned with the alien race of beings to which God and company belong. [Well Star Trek exhibited a multi-species crew from the start.] One such alien was apparently someone called Metatron, an angel who acted as the ‘voice of God’, a scribe, and is the tallest and greatest of the lot. ‘He’s’ sort of the chief cook and bottle washer on the Spaceship Heaven.

The Cherubim (singular is cherub): The extraterrestrial Cherubim might be related to the Seraphim in that they are enormous four-winged beings. The definitive book in the Bible on cherubim is the Book of Ezekiel, mainly the first and tenth chapter.

Governor or Watcher Angels: These are your typically obedient angels who just sort of watch over humanity in general, a sort of extraterrestrial Peeping Tom some of who had an eye for the Daughters of Men.   

Archangels: Senior officers of Spaceship Heaven. Those messenger and battle ready angels. The best known of the lot were the archangels who are very high-ranking angels indeed, starting with Michael, Gabriel and Raphael, but followed by Uriel, Simiel, Orifiel and Zachariel.

Angels: Ordinary crewmembers of the Spaceship Heaven, forever running errands for the senior officers.

Sons of God: Apparently hand chosen senior crew members, perhaps literally biological offspring of Captain God. The Sons of God were apparently some or all of the Governor or Watcher Angels.

Daughters of Men: Human females.

Nephilim: The offspring of the Sons of God and the Daughters of Men. They were apparently the ‘giants’ referred to ‘in the Earth’, though exactly how giant was giant isn’t spelled out.

Jesus: Another offspring of the Sons of God and the Daughters of Men, albeit much farther on down the historical track, or perhaps the offspring between God himself and the Daughters of Men (well one anyway). Jesus would later rise (from the ‘dead’) to become First Officer on board Spaceship Heaven. That Jesus is an extraterrestrial is admitted by himself in John 8:23. Of note here is that Jesus probably used holographic technology to give an appearance of walking on water and/or appearing alive and in the ‘flesh’ post execution – which he survived, another sign of high technology in operation. 

Baal: God’s prime extraterrestrial rival for power and authority in the region, though there’s never any direct and open physical conflict twixt the two.

Moses: Just one of several abductees noted and logged in Biblical texts. He was abducted by a ‘cloud’ and carried on up the mountain for a close encounter with a supreme alien lawmaker. Upon his return his face had an unnatural glow about it which caused those waiting his return to be afraid of him.

Jacob: Witnessed (or dreamed about) angels ascending and descending to and from Spaceship Heaven.

Ezekiel: A human who had a close encounter of the third kind (those Cherubim) plus an associated abduction event.

Jonah: Spent three days and nights in isolation inside a technological craft.

Joshua: 1) Was in possession of high technology sonic weaponry at Jericho. 2) He later witnessed several UFOs that stood still in the sky providing illumination for his army.

Enoch and Elijah: These two human males are the only two whose ultimate fate (death) we don’t know anything about. Both humans apparently joined the Spaceship Heaven at the behest of her captain never to be seen again, albeit Elijah was spotted with Jesus by three of his disciples (see Transfiguration).

Old Age Pensioners: Methuselah, Noah, Adam as well as others, apparently lived to really, really ripe old ages, way, way, way beyond the standard three score and ten. The explanation: these were humans invited by the officers and crew of Spaceship Heaven to take a relativistic interstellar journey at velocities at a considerable fraction of the speed of light. They aged normally on board, but because of the time dilation effect, time passed more rapidly back on Earth, or more slowly on the spaceship (same difference), such that they returned home hundreds of terrestrial year’s later – Earth time - thus the false appearance that they were hundreds of years old at journey’s end but didn’t look a day over thirty because they really weren’t a day over thirty! It’s referred to as the Twin Paradox of Special Relativity, though it’s not really a paradox at all, just the logical conclusion of the equations of Special Relativity which have been verified by observation and experiment, at least on the micro scale.

Matthew, Mark, Luke & John: A quartet of roving reporters who independently investigated what was to them relatively recent history – just several generations had passed – each in his own way. The topic of their investigation was an alleged historical figure, a figure that seemed to have gained some degree of uniqueness, notoriety and prominence as a possible deity and the quartet wrote up their short biographies accordingly. 

To be continued…

My Top Astronomical Anomalies: A List

The Universe is filled with mystery. There are a myriad of things that are, but shouldn’t be, or probably shouldn’t be. Adequate explanations are not only lacking, but even the wildest possible theoretical explanations are rather thin on the ground. There often tends to be a massive divide between observation and theory. These anomalies run the range from the Universe as a whole, down to your local neck of the woods, well the solar system anyway. Here are a few my favourite astronomical anomalies.

THE BIG BANG EVENT: This is no doubt a concept that nearly everyone has heard about, and swallowed hook, line and cosmological sinker because scientists present this creation of the Universe scenario as fact. It’s not fact; just the most viable theory of many theories and it has serious flaws. The accepted theoretical account of the creation or event that kick-started our Universe off not only has that event a something that created all of matter and energy, but all of time and space as well, and this creation event, to boot, all took place in a volume less than that of a pinhead (something in the realm of the quantum) and for no apparent reason at all. First there was nothing; then there was something. Wow!

At best observations that support this are indirect being made some 13.7 billion years after-the-fact. Those indirect observations that provide evidence for the Big Bang event are the fact that the Universe is expanding; the Universe has a temperature – the remnants from the hot Big Bang called the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR) and the amounts and ratio of hydrogen to helium. In reality there are no direct observations as nobody was present at Ground Zero all those billions of years ago.

There are really a couple of anomalies present in the standard Big Bang account. 1) You have a violation of causality – something (space, time, matter and energy) created from nothing which is a violation of several conservation laws or relationships. 2) You have a violation of pure common sense that tells you that you can not stuff the contents of the entire Universe into the realm of the quantum, something actually way less in volume in fact than a pinhead. If that’s not anomalous, I don’t know what is!

ACCELERATING UNIVERSE: The anomaly here is quite straightforward in that there’s considerable observational evidence that the expansion rate of the Universe is accelerating. However, logic dictates that because of the overall gravity that the Universe has, the expansion rate of the Universe should be decelerating. The ‘antigravity’ energy required to accelerate the Universe’s expansion has to come from somewhere, and in ever increasing amounts to keep on keeping on the ever increasing rate of acceleration, yet, the Universe, almost by definition, already contains all there is and ever will be. If extra ‘antigravity’ energy is being created, it’s being created out of nothing. Something from nothing is a clear violation of the basic conservation laws and principles that form the bedrock of modern science.  

DARK ENERGY & DARK MATTER: When considering all things cosmological, it’s become apparent that astronomers only observe about 4% of the matter plus energy that should be present. That is, about 96% of the matter plus energy that should be present and detectable to account for the observed behaviour of our observable universe is missing! Now 1% might be understandable given measurement uncertainty (error bars), but hardly 96%! So, cosmologists have postulated concepts termed ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy’ to make up the deficit. However, nobody has the foggiest idea what exactly ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy’ actually is. Neither has actually been detected either out there on in the laboratory down here – obviously. The anomaly here is that ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy’ are both ad hoc theoretical concepts to make sense of various astronomical observations, but without benefit of any actual observation of ‘dark matter’ and/or ‘dark energy ’to back things up. That’s a rather slight-of-hand trick, and until cosmologists put actual observational money on the board where their theoretical mouth is, it’s all an anomalous pie-in-the-cosmic-sky.

MATTER-ANTIMATTER RATIO: In our Universe, there should theoretically be equal amounts of matter and antimatter created at the time of the Big Bang, but there’s not. We observe a Universe made out of matter. Our antimatter has gone walkabout. Why is it so? That question illustrates a big anomaly that doesn’t have a really satisfying answer. Mother Nature shouldn’t favour one form of matter over the other, yet apparently that’s the case. Perhaps that’s just as well. A Universe that’s 50% matter and 50% antimatter will ultimately become a Universe of just 100% radiation or energy, and thus no material you and no material me.

MONOPOLES: We all know about magnetic fields having two sides, whether it’s a bar magnet or the Earth’s magnetic field (or those part and parcel of many other astronomical bodies) – there’s a south pole and a north pole; a positive and a negative. It will probably come as a surprise that there should also be a monopole – a magnet with just one pole, north OR south; positive OR negative. That’s because one of the many Big Bang ‘in the beginning’ predictions of all things theoretical is the existence of magnetic monopoles – magnets with either a south pole or a north pole, but not both. Alas, we’ve never ever found and confirmed the reality of even one monopole, so theoretical prediction and observation are not in harmony. In other words, an anomaly exists.

QUASARS: Quasars are ‘quasi-stellar objects’. They are ‘stellar’ because they aren’t all that large (like a galaxy). They are ‘quasi’ because they give off energy way, way, way more times greater than any star known in any astronomical catalogue. They seem to be primordial objects – they formed long ago and are now far away.  Quasars, like stars or galaxies, are their own entities and if two or more show a very close and special causality relationships then they should show identical recessional velocities (since the Universe is expanding and they are part of the Universe and that expansion). Recessional velocities are measured by an object’s red-shift. Theory identifies red-shift with velocity. However, you apparently have some observations of causality connected quasar pairs with vastly differing red-shifts (measurements of their recessional velocities). The anomaly, in an analogy, is that you can not have a runner running at 15 miles per hour holding hands with another runner running at 3 miles per hour!

NEITH: Neith is, or was, the now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t. now-forever-lost satellite of our twin planet (in size if nothing else), Venus. The anomaly here is that bona-fide professional astronomers, not one but numerous celebrated astronomers, including Giovanni Cassini (1625-1712), sighted, noted and logged the existence of the damn thing and wrote up their findings in their professional journals. Okay, the time period was the mid-1600s to mid-1700s, but the professional eyeballs and the professional equipment was good enough to verify one way or the other the presence or absence of a reasonably sized natural satellite in orbit around Venus.

Of over thirty sightings of Neith, the best known and verified were in 1645, 1672, 1686, 1740, 1759, 1761 and 1764 (multiple sightings on numerous days in March). Observations over that stretch of period would seemingly rule out the ‘satellite’ being a faint star or asteroid or outer planet like Uranus or Neptune that just happened to be way beyond Venus but in the direct line of sight. Sometimes the observed phase of Neith matched the phase of Venus, which again suggests that the object was in close proximity to the planet.

Venus, inward and closer to the Sun than Earth, is a very visible and prominent celestial object when viewed from Earth, commonly called the Morning and Evening ‘Star’. We’ve all seen Venus; in fact if you know exactly where to look it can be seen in the daytime sky. Venus is far enough away from the Sun that the Sun’s glare doesn’t drown out reflected light from Venus, and presumably any objects near or in orbit around Venus. A natural satellite of Venus of any reasonable size should be readily detectable with the astronomical equipment available at the time. And so it really didn’t raise any astronomical eyebrows when Neith was in fact discovered. The anomaly here is that all and sundry were wrong. Neith doesn’t exist. Venus has no natural satellite(s). Now either all and sundry were totally incompetent and wouldn’t know one end of a telescope from the other, or else Neith really existed but somehow exited the local neighbourhood. If that’s the case, then Neith wasn’t natural at all but under intelligent control, and not by any terrestrial intelligence. What Neith was, and where it disappeared to, are major anomalies. 

From the examples above, I conclude that it almost seems as if someone (something) is ultimately responsible for our Universe, but he / she/ it / they didn’t quite think things through sufficiently. Methinks an all knowing, all powerful supernatural God type being wouldn’t have stuffed things up. So either the Universe is naturally stuffed up, or it was created stuffed up!

Dark Energy: The Ultimate Free Lunch

Science is full of surprising discoveries. One that recently won the Nobel Prize in Physics was the discovery that the Universe is not just expanding, but that expansion rate is accelerating. The cause is a mysterious and unexplained ‘dark energy’ which is ever increasing right along with the accelerating Universe. But if the Universe contains all that is and ever will be, where is this extra ‘dark energy’ coming from and is this creation out of nothing a gross violation of the basic laws and principles of physics? If yes, perhaps there’s an even more surprising alternative.

  

If you toss a ball into the air, there are two basic forces at work acting on the ball (ignoring atmospheric friction or drag of course but one can pretend there’s no atmosphere). There’s the oomph (kinetic) energy you give the ball in the upwards direction; there’s the gravitational force that pulls on the ball in the opposite direction. There are two outcomes. 

If you toss a ball up into the air, you expect just one thing to happen – the ball will go up; the ball will slow down; the ball will stop; the ball will fall back to the ground. Why? Earth‘s gravity, that’s why.

If your name is Hercules and you really toss that ball up into the air, maybe, just maybe, the ball won’t fall back down to the ground. You have given the ball enough oomph energy to overcome, though not avoid, Earth’s gravitational pull. But, even if it doesn’t fall back to ground level, even if it keeps on going up, up and away for all time, it will still be forever slowing down. Why? Earth’s gravity, that’s why.

In both scenarios the oomph you give the ball can never be enough to enable the ball to escape Earth’s gravity entirely. The ball must slow down. That’s because the gravitational pull of the Earth on the ball (and also the ball on the Earth) extends to infinity. At no point does gravity cut out. You can’t escape gravity though your energy oomph can be enough to prevent its domination – the ball doesn’t have to fall back to Earth.

Now, the absolutely one scenario you would never expect, is that if you toss the ball into the air, even if the ball didn’t fall back down to ground level if it was given really lots and lots of oomph, that the ball would somehow not only fail to slow down but would in fact speed up. If you witnessed that you’d suspect that your mind or vision was faulty. The only way the ball could accelerate away from you is if it had some sort of additional, internal energy supply (like a rocket). Since it doesn’t, it can’t.

Now apply that logic to the Universe as a whole. In the beginning the Big Bang (the explosive event of the creation) gave a certain finite amount of oomph to all the bits and pieces that make up the Universe. And thus the Universe is expanding – a standard scenario when you have an explosion. When a bomb explodes, the result is an expansion of bomb-stuff. Now all those bits and pieces have a certain finite amount of gravity. The Universe as a whole therefore has a certain finite amount of gravity.

And so we have a similar contest as per the ball’s oomph and Earth’s gravity. Now, either the combined universal gravity of all those bits and pieces will be enough to overcome the finite amount of oomph provided by the Big Bang, and the Universe, like the ball, will slow down, stop and reverse direction (becoming a contracting Universe) or the oomph will prove greater than all those combined bits and pieces gravity and the Universe will expand forever, though that expansion rate will slow down over time. The expansion rate may never reach zero, but the gravity of the bits and pieces must drag forever and ever on the overall initial oomph. The Universal expansion will slow down, albeit never to zero. Okay, like the ball and the Earth, it’s pretty much one or the other. You, as per the ball and the Earth, wouldn’t expect the expansion rate of the overall Universe to increase. That defies logic, everyday experience and basic physics.

For the Universe to accelerate, it would have to be supplied with extra energy from outside, but the Universe is everything and contains everything, there is no outside, so where can additional energy come from? It can’t, not without violating one of the most basic of all basic fundamental physical principles – you can change one form of energy into another form, but you can’t create energy from nothing. Wouldn’t it be nice to just snap your fingers; wave a magic wand, and presto, your empty gas tank is now full or your cold house is now snug and warm! You don’t get something from nothing! The common phrase is that “there’s no such thing as a free lunch!”

So the fundamental question cosmologists (astronomers who study the Universe as a whole) were interested in finding out was whether the Universe’s expansion rate was slowing down enough to cause the Universe to grind to a halt and then reverse; or not. There was never any question that the expansion rate was slowing down. It was just a question to what order of magnitude and was it enough to ultimately cause a Big Crunch.

And so it came to pass that two competing teams of astronomers embarked on a study to crunch the deceleration rate numbers; answer that question of whether the Universe will eventually cease expanding and undergo a contraction (like that ball falling back down to Earth) or not (like the ball that Hercules tossed). Nobody on either team would have bet a nickel, far less the family farm, that the answer would be none of the above. Somehow or other, the bits and pieces that make up the Universe gave the middle finger to gravity. The unthinkable became thinkable, in fact, it became fact. The Universe’s expansion rate was accelerating; therefore energy must be being created out of nothing to provide that extra gravity-defying oomph; there was such a thing as a free lunch after all! The mysterious and unknown energy source behind this unexpected phenomenon was termed ‘dark energy’.

There’s little to dispute in terms of observational evidence for the existence of ‘dark energy’, or rather the fact that the expansion rate of the Universe is accelerating. Evidence has gone from strength to strength.

This discovery was so great, and so totally unexpected, that the team leaders were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics (2011) for it. But, it must be pointed out that the recognition was for the discovery, not for the explanation. There is no explanation. You can’t adequately explain a free lunch! You need extra energy oomph to power up the acceleration rate of the Universe just like you need an extra surge of gasoline to accelerate your car. Where does that extra energy come from and keep on keeping on coming on from? Just calling that addition source ‘dark energy’ provides no explanation for the free lunch it is. There is a fundamental problem here.

How so a free lunch? Well if I have my facts right, the way ‘dark energy’ works is this. Dark energy is an intrinsic property of space that exerts a pressure that causes that space to expand, which in turn creates new space which has ‘dark energy’ as an intrinsic property which results in that space expanding thus creating more space and thus more ‘dark energy’ and so on and so on. More space means more ‘dark energy’ which means more space, etc. It’s creation out of nothing, or, it’s a free lunch. Now this notion of an expanding space alone puts me at odds with the establishment of modern cosmology. We part company here since I remain convinced the Universe is expanding through existing space. But that still leaves the acceleration rate to the expanding Universe, even if through existing space, as an anomaly.

From the Oxford Companion to Cosmology (2008) we have this snippet: “The simplest dark energy model is the cosmological constant*, which maintains a fixed density as the Universe expands. … Thus far the cosmological constant has proven capable of explaining all relevant observational data, and thus is the chosen ingredient of the standard cosmological model.”

What’s wrong with this statement? It postulates a free lunch, that’s what.

Let’s drop down a notch in scale and look at something more familiar.

To illustrate, take a pure ice cube which has a density slightly less than the pure fresh water from which it came (which is why ice cubes float in water). Say the ice cube is one inch by one inch by one inch or one cubic inch in volume. Now double the dimensions to two inches by two inches by two inches. The ice cube is now eight cubic inches in volume. The ice cube has expanded in volume -so far so good. The density of the ice cube hasn’t changed, so you have to account for the creation of the extra seven cubic inches of ice. If you can’t account for the additional seven cubic inches then something is amiss. The alternative is that the original ice cube has expanded, but no additional ice has been added, so the density of the ice cube has decreased – same amount of ice but spread over a greater volume. But that’s equally screwy. You can’t change the density of ice and still have ice. Density is a fixed parameter of the substance we call ice.

Now change the ice to water vapour and you can alter the parameters. One cubic inch of water vapour can expand to eight cubic inches of water vapour. If you don’t add extra water vapour then the density of your original cubic inch of water vapour obviously decreases in the expansion. You have less water molecules per unit of volume than you had originally. Now the Universe is like water vapour. The Universe is not one solid lump like our ice cube; rather it’s zillions of bits and pieces (like water molecules) that occupy and spread throughout an ever expanding volume. The same amount of stuff expanded into a greater volume means of necessity less density. Any high school student knows that.

You cannot have the concept of density without also talking about the density of a something (like the cosmological constant). It’s meaningless to talk about the density of nothing. That something could be matter, energy or more likely a mixture of both since it’s hard to conceive of energy-less matter or matter in an energy-less state. In fact it’s physically impossible.

But note the Oxford phrase above: “the cosmological constant, which maintains a fixed density as the Universe expands” - something’s screwy somewhere.

If we can’t accept creation of this mysterious cosmological constant ‘dark energy’ out of nothing, whatever is driving the accelerating expansion of the Universe (call it ‘dark energy’ if you must) must also be getting thinner and thinner on the ground, but that would be like easing your foot off the accelerator pedal of your car. You car would cease to accelerate and ease back to a constant velocity (in Universe terms a steady expansion rate) or a deceleration (which is what our two teams of cosmologists were trying to measure in the first place). So it’s a Catch-22. We can’t have creation out of nothing (a free lunch) – that is just not acceptable - but without it you can’t have an expanding and ever accelerating Universe which has been experimentally observed.

I used to think that ‘dark energy’ must be a variation on the theme of the vacuum energy, but I couldn’t figure out how to get a free lunch out of the vacuum energy. For the perplexed, the vacuum energy just means that even when you seemingly have nothing, a vacuum, you still have some energy present. Translated, you can’t have an absolute state of nothingness which would be a theoretical temperature of absolute zero. At the micro or quantum scale, since energy and mass are equivalent (Einstein’s famous equation), energy can be converted to mass  – usually a pair of matter-antimatter particles, which annihilate each other quick-smart returning the energy back to the environment that created them in the first place. Mass can be converted to energy. There’s no free lunch. Conservation laws and principles rule the vacuum energy roost.

Has the Universe always been expanding at an ever accelerating rate? No. There are two competing forces at work. Gravity, a pull force, and this ‘dark energy’, a kind of antigravity or push force. Over time, so the story goes, the amount of ‘dark energy’ increases as space expands. But gravity doesn’t increase. The amount of gravity the Universe has now is the amount the Universe had way back when. At the start gravity was king of the hill because there wasn’t that much space, therefore that much ‘dark energy’. However, with every passing second the amount of ‘dark energy’ increased until it finally overran gravity which was standing still or constant. At that point of intersection the acceleration began in earnest. Apparently that was some five or so billion years ago. Prior to that, the Universe was expanding but at a decelerating rate.

There are two related offshoots to this ‘dark energy’ puzzlement. One is the Big Bang itself. Now the standard cosmological model has it that the Big Bang took place in a small space; a very, very, very small space. In fact the space available was something atomic sized. You couldn’t even see our Universe with the unaided eye a micro-second prior to the Big Bang Ka-Boom it was that tiny, yet anything and everything that exists today, existed then in that tiny volume. Now the problem is that when you try to figure out the state of play with the mass of the Universe (gravity) crushed down to the size of an atom, (the realm of the quantum), the equations break down. You have no idea what the state of play was. In a broader context, the physics of gravity (general relativity) cannot be reconciled with the physics of the quantum. Thousand have tried over many decades. They were just banging their heads against a brick wall. To this day, nobody can fit the hand of gravity into the glove of quantum physics. The way I like to put it is that you apparently have two different and incompatible sets of physics software running the cosmos. That’s nuts! That too needs an explanation.

The other – well there’s an awful lot of Universe for just little old us, and an awful lot more was created (that accelerating Universe) in the time it took you to read that. It’s like having a flea housed in Buckingham Palace that’s adding additional rooms on at a rapid rate of knots. For the flea, it’s a lot of wasted space. There’s an awful lot of just about empty space between the planets; between the stars; between the galaxies; between clusters of galaxies, etc. Why do we, and any other extraterrestrial life forms that may exist, need with so much empty space and pretty much worthless real estate, nearly all of which we can’t even reach? That’s nuts. That needs an explanation, like maybe most of the Universe is just visual holographic wallpaper and has no more reality than the images on your bedroom wallpaper. Is the Universe in fact just a simulation; a virtual reality?   

The way to befuddle an artificially (simulated) intelligent ‘life’ form is to give it an unsolvable problem like dividing a number by zero; calculating the square root of a negative number; coming up with the definitive final value of Pi; or solving an unsolvable paradox like something that both is and is not at the same time; how many angels can dance on the head of a pin; or create a spherical cube. The possibilities are numerous and it’s been used many a time in sci-fi plots to demonstrate the superiority of wetware (brains) over software (silicon chips).

But what if we weren’t wetware (any more than the characters in your dreams are), but in reality software – say a simulated being – an artificial intelligence being given unsolvable puzzles to solve like quantum gravity; why is there so much Universe; why are all electrons identical; why ghosts; and how come crop circles; how can dragons and griffins be real creatures without any fossil remains; and how can a viable breeding herd of lake ‘monsters’ exist in Loch Ness for so long without absolute verification, along with other anomalies that make no apparent sense, like why the expansion rate of the Universe is accelerating.

Conclusion: There’s no disputing the observations that the expansion rate of the Universe is accelerating. While that appears to be wildly improbable, a violation of natural law, that is creation from nothing – a free lunch in other words – it’s not difficult to do as a simulation. So, do we live in a simulated Universe as virtual beings?

*The cosmological constant was a concept invented by Einstein. He knew that the Universe should be contracting under its mutual gravity yet he and nearly everyone else knew (or assumed) that the Universe was static. So he needed a constant outward pressure (the cosmological constant) to balance gravity just-so to enable the Universe to be static – unchanging. So, when Einstein learned, along with the rest of the world later on down the track that the Universe wasn’t static but expanding, he called his ad hoc cosmological constant mechanism the greatest blunder of his career in science. However, the concept, though dormant post-Einstein, has never been too far from the minds of those who could resurrect it in a flash if it served their purpose, like explaining the accelerating expansion rate.

Impossible, Improbable & Imaginary Extraterrestrial Geographies

Far away places with strange sounding names. Sometimes they exist; sometimes they exist but not quite in the way at times suspected or expected; sometimes they don’t exist at all. It’s the latter two categories I examine here.

Impossible, improbable or imaginary geographies are often located, as things turned out, off planet. Here are a few examples of those impossible, improbable & imaginary extraterrestrial geographies.

Vulcan: We all know that Mercury is the closest planetary object to the Sun. But that’s not celestial physics set in stone. There could be objects even closer in, though difficult to see in the intense glare of our parent star, just as many of us haven’t ever seen Mercury being too close to the Sun to be seen with the unaided eye unless conditions are absolutely spot-on. So, way back when, when astronomical instrumentation and technology wasn’t as good as today, coupled with expectations and the thrill of the chase, well it’s not too surprising that astronomers ‘found’ that there was a planet even closer to the Sun than Mercury. Such a planet would be hot property indeed, and so when looking for mythological names that were ‘hot’ with which to christen it, well Vulcan fit the bill. And so it came to pass that Vulcan was the planet closest to the Sun; Mercury relegated to next in line. Unfortunately, they were wrong. Wishful thinking trumped less than ideal observations and so Vulcan was created in the mind as opposed to being actually verifiable. Mercury was restored to first rock from the Sun status – Vulcan became imaginary real estate. But, as Star Trek fans all know, the name lives on as the (non-solar) home of Mr. Spock and kin. 

Neith: Venus, the Goddess of Love, should have a lover – a companion. Venus, the planet, should too have a companion. After all, Venus is the near twin of Earth in terms of size and proximity to the Sun (Venus is second rock out), and Earth has a natural satellite so it stood to reason that Venus should have one too. Alas, it was not to be, but not for lack of trying. Take Neith – companion (but in mythology not lover) to Venus the planet. As with the case of Vulcan, wishful thinking, plus perhaps less than ideal telescopes (relative to modern scopes) led to a flurry of sightings of that expected satellite of Venus, named Neith, so confident were the discoverers that this was no illusion but a physical object. Now there’s a slight problem here. Venus isn’t that close in proximity to the Sun that solar glare should have caused problems. It wasn’t just one professional astronomer who sighted Neith, but many. And while the optical equipment of the day wasn’t 2012 state-of-the-art, it was more than adequate, or should have been more than adequate, to see a reasonable sized satellite in orbit around Venus. So, one could argue that Neith was indeed an actual bit of celestial real estate that went walkabout. Natural satellites don’t have a habit of going walkabout and disappearing. Unnatural satellites on the other hand… Now, might our own Moon be such an unnatural satellite?

Spaceship Moon: Once upon a time there was no real scientifically satisfactorily explanation for the Moon, or rather how the Moon came to be our Moon. One idea that the Moon was an independent body in an irregular and rogue orbit that somehow in a just-so kind of way happen to get gravitationally captured by the Earth was really too implausible. The Moon could have formed jointly with the Earth out of the same cosmic interstellar dust cloud that gave rise to the rest of the solar system. Some bits of that cosmic dust clumped together to form the planets around the parent star, the Sun, and in like fashion other bits of that dust came together around the planets to form natural satellites. Alas, post Apollo, chemical analysis of Moon bits compared to Earth bits ruled that out. For a similar reason, as well as problems in celestial physics, the Moon wasn’t born of a rapidly spinning proto-Earth leaving behind the Pacific basin as its scar, in the same way water droplets would be flung off a globe that was rapidly spinning.

Enter stage left the far-out-star-scout alternative idea that the Moon had nothing to do with the proto-Sun and proto-solar system and proto-Earth. The Moon wasn’t a rogue object captured by the Earth’s gravity, but it was a rouge object that was deliberately steered into an Earth orbit. The Moon was actually a hollow artificially constructed spaceship, covered with lots of dust and rock debris as a natural shield against cosmic radiation and other cosmic bits that would now and again slam into this spaceship – hazards of an interstellar voyage. Anomalies like Transient Lunar Phenomena (strange glowing lights seen on an irregular basis on the lunar surface) are explained as artificial. The Moon’s aliens are the source of the UFO phenomenon. The reason for the aliens steering the artificial Moon into Earth orbit in the first place is that Earth provided all the close at hand next door resources the aliens could ever want.

Of course to spoil that good artificial hollow Moon theory, some bright scientist comes up with yet another natural lunar origin explanation that now fitted all of the facts – a rogue near Mars-sized planet slammed, albeit just a glancing blow, into the proto-Earth, and the resulting mixture of thrown off debris from the proto-Earth and the near totally destroyed smaller rouge planet came together under gravity in near Earth proximity to become, the Moon. So, alas, the artificial hollow Moon proved to be another bit of implausible geography.

Face on Mars: The ‘is there or isn’t there life on Mars’ game was set afoot when the American Viking space probes arrived in the Martian arena in 1976. On the scale of micro-organisms, that question still hasn’t been resolved. There are those who are convinced the Viking craft that landed on the Martian surface hit biological pay dirt. Most others say it was only chemical, not biochemical pay dirt. The fence is being sat on by others to this day. However, the other Viking craft that orbited Mars boldly detected not microbial life, but intelligent life on Mars. One photographed the ‘face on Mars’, and by Jove, that’s exactly what it looked like – one huge monolithic massive stone structure on the Martian surface that resembled down to exacting details, a human face. Well, appearances can be, and often are, deceiving. All of us, at one time or another has seen geometry and recognizable shapes, including faces, in the clouds or in rock formations or on toasted cheese sandwiches. Images of ‘Jesus’ appearing on all manner of things are regular fodder for the tabloids.  Anyway, the whole ‘face on Mars’ issue spawned an entire mini publishing boom, though sceptics were 99 & 44/100’s % convinced that it was all just an illusion. And so it came to pass that NASA went back to Mars post-Viking, and, under pressure, had a new orbiting probe take another look under differing lighting conditions. The score – sceptics one; ‘face on Mars’ advocates zero. It really was all just an illusion, a trick of those lighting conditions that when coupled with some wishful thinking produced another example of imaginary geography.     

Hollow Moons of Mars: But wait, we’re not quite through with Mars yet. Mars has two relatively tiny satellites discovered in 1877 and both named after offspring of Ares/Mars – the god of war - that orbit around it. The one farther out and smaller of the two is called Deimos (about 4 miles radius and over 12,400 miles altitude) and the other larger and closer moon is Phobos (about 7 miles radius; altitude 3700 miles from the Martian surface). Actually it would be more accurate to say that neither is a perfect sphere; potato-shaped is a more spot-on description.

Now it came to pass that some scientists monitoring the relative orbits of Deimos and Phobos noticed that they were shrinking much, much, faster that they should have been. The moons were spiralling in towards the planet, eventually destined to have a close encounter of the Ka-Boom impact kind. The very tenuous Martian atmosphere isn’t much of a drag to what must be solid rock moons. The only alterative explanation is that these satellites were hollow; much less dense than solid rock, and therefore, wait for it, artificial, probably relics of a long extinct Martian civilization. Well actually, there was another alternative explanation – the observations of the shrinking orbits were at the limits of resolution technology and were erroneous. Space probes that have since passed up-close-and-personal to and photographed these satellites, and show exactly what you’d expect – not gleaming metallic hollow space stations or the image of a Star Wars type of Death Star configuration, but irregular, potato-shaped, cratered hunks of rock.

Heaven: If you accept the literal truth of Biblical passages, you can draw no other conclusion other than that Heaven is a physical place not of this Earth since there are lots of passages relating beings ascending and descending twixt the two. Therefore Heaven must be located somewhere up there or out there and as the Bible points out, home to an assorted range of supernatural deities (Father, Son and Holy Ghost) and staff, presumably angels (or extraterrestrial officers and crew depending on point of view). Unfortunately, despite Heaven being physical geography, it ain’t been seen by man, telescope or space probe. Heaven would have to be fairly conspicuous – deities and staff don’t reside on a quarter acre block. Try something more like the Taj Mahal or Buckingham Palace or Angkor Wat all cubed.

Of course perhaps Heaven is located light-years away among the stars, but that would hinder rapid interventions by the Heavenly residents here on Terra Firma. Prayers can’t travel faster than the speed of light, and like radio broadcasts, rapidly fade according to the inverse-square law – twice the distance, one-quarter the strength; thrice the distance, one-ninth the strength, etc. So, Heaven, if it makes any sense at all, should be nearby, in cosmic terms. Maybe Heaven resides and is hidden within the cloud bands of Jupiter, though that’s hardly a tranquil or ideal location as is in fact most of the solar system’s real estate. Of course if Heaven were a spaceship, a large spaceship – think Buckingham Palace cubed again – well perhaps that explains Neith. It just moved from the Venus environs to a less conspicuous location like in the asteroid belt or within the rings of Saturn - hidden in plain sight as it were. The upshot is, until proven otherwise, Heaven must be considered a mythical place.

Perhaps we all should be satisfied with the geography we got for real, keeping in mind that the geography we know is but a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny (repeat several hundred more times) of the geography yet to be discovered and explored – the vast cosmos beckons.

Abducted by Aliens? A Possible Case History

From right around the world, from people from all races, creeds, cultures, ages and occupations, come their tales of alleged abductions, not by terrestrial kidnappers looking for a quick megabuck, but extraterrestrials looking for – well it isn’t cash. While no two abduction accounts are absolutely identical, there are such close similarities that the subject has to be taken seriously. Some accounts detail the experience; some just the possibility. This falls into the latter category.

What follows are the threads of evidence that individually are relatively commonplace, but when taken together are highly suggestive that something extraordinary, even an out-of-this-world experience, has happened to an ordinary person – Mr. Joe Blow Average Citizen (who has related the following to me in confidence). If you’re looking for proof positive, even a smoking gun or just plain (where there’s) smoke (there’s fire) that UFO/alien abductions are reality and not something illusory or delusional, then look elsewhere for I’m not providing it here. Instead, consider this just one more chink in an extremely long chain of UFO/alien abduction chinks that collectively add up to a facet of society that needs to be taken as seriously by the skeptics as it’s taken by the victims and their families and friends. 

Mr. Joe Blow Average Citizen is exactly that, apart from the fact that Mr. Joe Blow Average Citizen believes that the alien ‘grays’ have taken an interest in him – not that that makes him anything other than Mr. Joe Blow Average Citizen. Mr. Joe Blow Average Citizen has lots of apparent company.

What sorts of evidence leads this person to think they may have had at least one, possibly several, UFO/alien abduction experiences? Experiences they have no obvious conscious self-awareness of, but would surely have some degree of subconscious recollection of, which will play out a bit further on down the track.

Firstly, and the one piece of physical evidence that remains, is a long roughly 3 inch linear scar on the slightly right side of the abdomen. It’s not a trivial scar, the sort of one you might get and not notice or pay any real attention to. Yet, given the scenario that the receipt of any such a wound that would leave behind such a scar would have been obvious to the person concerned is not apparently the case. How very odd.

Secondly, the person concerned recalls many superficial wounds of the lower left leg noticed on one occasion as if the leg had been dragged through a thicket of brambles. The mystery is the person concerned doesn’t wear shorts; always just full length shoe-top jeans, and any such routine excursion through any sort of brambles or other sharp vegetation wouldn’t have reached the leg in question. Alas, all evidence of that has by now healed up leaving no trace. As with the abominable scar, the person concerned hasn’t a clue how these superficial ‘bramble’ wounds happened since there no such bushes on the property in any case.

Thirdly, if you pull, tear, wrench or otherwise seriously injure your musculature, it’s highly unlikely you can’t recall the event by which it happened, like say lifting a heavy object or undergoing a sudden but unnatural movement in a sports event. We’ve all experienced that sort of happening. But what about when it happens and you cannot recall the event that’s now causing your discomfort, even intense pain? The person concerned has experienced several bouts of back-wrenching discomfort without knowing the cause; in one case experienced intense and ongoing for lengthy periods right shoulder pain, as if one had a torn rotator-cuff experience, but equally being unable to associate the cause with the effect.  That sort of shoulder injury is common in baseball pitchers, but unfortunately, the person has long since retired from active baseball playing. All of these sorts of wrenching muscle injuries are suggestive of one violently resisting being dragged kicking and screaming against-their-will to their fate, like being abducted.

Another common UFO/alien abduction experience is nosebleeds, and the person concerned has experienced those. The alleged association is that aliens have implanted some sort of tiny [tracking?] device up through and behind one nasal cavity. You might argue that nosebleeds are pretty commonplace, and you would be right. However, there are three unusual facets. Firstly, they happened exclusively in one and only one nostril. Secondly, they normally happened shortly after awakening. Thirdly, if the person concerned were prone to nosebleeds, they should still be happening, but for some strange (even if welcomed reason), they’ve stopped happening, as if according to the alien ‘grays’ “that’s it – we’re now through with you – many thanks and see ya”. And it’s stating the obvious that the person concerned cannot account for them, like being punched in the nose or banging into a door, etc. 

Moving away from the purely medical, the person concerned relates how they experience at quite irregular intervals, extremely restless nights without logical explanation. Okay, we all have those off nights when sleep is elusive and we toss and turn, but usually there is some reason(s) we can assign that accounts for it – a stressful day; a dread of tomorrow; a mild case of evening meal food poisoning; an unusually experimental highly spicy meal or one you had much later than normal; mixing your drinks that you don’t ordinarily do; perhaps it’s an ultra hot-and-humid night, etc. But what if none of the above apply – you have an extremely bad night, the sheets/blankets/covers are all helter-skelter in the morning, yet the day and evening before was absolutely no different than multi-dozens of others where sleep was restful and peaceful and there was hardly a wrinkle in the sheets come morning. Translated, you cannot explain why you had a bad and extremely restless night. Well, if a collision at sea can ruin your day, a UFO/alien abduction can ruin your night’s sleep, and if you have no conscious recollection of the ‘grays’ having their wicked way with you, well then you’re stumped for a reason.   

But the clincher that pushed our alleged victim over the edge in terms of thinking quite seriously about a possible relationship with the UFO alien ‘grays’ happened without warning.

The person concerned is a regular Red Cross blood donor with over 120 whole blood donations under the belt, and as anyone who donates blood is aware, you are subjected to a pre-donation interview and medical check to make sure 1) you are fit and well and can withstand the rigors and dangers of blood donation (small, but not zero), and 2) to weed out to the greatest extent possible any possibility of a medical lawsuit against the Red Cross by someone who has received your tainted blood. In fact you have to sign a legal document that you have told the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about your state of health – otherwise you could end up in the poo too.

Now part of that pre-donation medical check involves checking your weight; checking your hemoglobin levels; checking your blood pressure; and lastly measuring your heartbeat or pulse rate. It was with respect to the latter that things came to a head.

The person concerned, expecting yet another very routine pre-blood donation Q&A and medical checkup at the hands of the Red Cross inquisition, was stunned to be told that their heartbeat/pulse rate was way above normal – way, way too much above normal to be acceptable for donation purposes. Fortunately, some relaxation/meditation suggestions from the staff, like heavy controlled deep breathing, eventually reduced the pulse rate to just under the maximum allowed. The Red Cross isn’t about to give up a good blood donation without pulling out all the stops. Still, it was a quite an awaking for the person concerned.

Off to the quack, sorry the medical general practitioner – no explanation found. The pulse rate tended to be in any other set of circumstances to be within the normal range, at least normal for an old fart who’s not a superbly trained 20-something athlete. 

In the following blood donation after the initial discovery of the high pulse rate the person concerned wasn’t notified that the pulse rate was equally as high. Rather the person concerned actually had to ask. Now the point here is that it is highly likely that the person concerned had experienced very high pulse rates at blood donation interviews well prior to the one where it was first revealed. If it had been going on for quite some considerable time before that revelation then that might be a point in favor of some ongoing issue the donor was unaware of. 

The issue was the subconscious abduction experience(s) coming to the fore because the blood donation scenario was a bit too similar to the UFO/alien abduction medical procedures apparently or allegedly practiced – procedures that involve large needles. If one is terrified during a UFO/alien abduction experience, and just about all of us would be, then that stress would reflect itself by an extremely rapid pulse rate – panic stations. Placed in a situation that has strong resemblances to that (i.e. – blood donation), well it might not be too unusual to have that heartbeat rise to those sort of abnormal levels, despite being an old hand at giving blood and thus, you’d think, being always cool, calm and collected when fronting up and centre for the blood donation via the big needle experience.

I would maintain that the above bits and pieces of evidence are suggestive of, or at least compatible with, the typical UFO/alien abduction scenario.

There are however a trilogy of anomalies that need explaining.

Firstly, why hasn’t any external observer(s) witnessed, recorded, or at least reported the abduction-in-progress? The numbers of case histories where an abduction event happened and was observed by external disinterested parties (ones not part and parcel to being a participant) are extremely few and far between – too few being the facts of the matter.

Secondly, how do the aliens get in and out of the abode of their victim, with their victim, through locked doors and windows? It must be super-science of some kind or other.

Thirdly, why is there apparently no reaction from animal companions? You’d expect dogs to bark like mad; cats to hide in terror, not sleep soundly through it all. Animals tend to react as when having strange beings enter their abode. Lack of reaction is an anomaly in itself.

And that’s what makes the abduction area so frustrating. You have myriads of extremely sincere people insisting their alien abductions really happened yet the logic and the supporting evidence is lacking, as in there being any external verifications. 

There’s also the anomaly that older farts are less likely to be chosen as victims by the ‘grays’, though in this case, the pulse rate surges could be the psychological remnants of abductions many moons prior. 

One final drawback is that the person concerned happens to be independently highly knowledgeable about all things extraterrestrial, including things relating to the area of UFO/alien abductions. That alone would make any personal experiences claimed by that person in that area to be highly suspect. Being someone already saturated with that sort of knowledge, and claiming to also have firsthand experiences, is sort of bordering on a conflict-of-interest. That’s at least what sceptics would argue, and the person concerned has related that they acknowledge that.

When Religious Aliens Come Knocking: Part Two

Aliens, as in extraterrestrials, come in all manner of shapes and sizes at least according to science fiction authors, TV produces, filmmakers and even scientists. We have to rely on them since we don’t yet have an alien on the slab in the lab for verification. Our potential aliens also have all manner of philosophies and intentions – invasion and sex usually dominate. But what about religion: their existence and impact on our religion and of greater importance, their religion’s impact on us. 

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

When it comes to ET, the traditional Hollywood image, often reinforced by some scientists, is that when the aliens come calling, it will be with ray-guns blasting away (like in “The War of the Worlds”), unless they are sneaky like in “Village of the Damned” plus sequel “Children of the Damned”, or “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (several versions). Justification for depicting ET as nasty is often given based on terrestrial histories of invasions and conquests. A warfare scenario pessimist is hardly ever disappointed; a peace scenario optimist frequently is.

But let’s look on the bright side. ET arrives and there’s not a ray-gun in sight. It’s the dawn of a new and enlightened era! But let’s substitute their ray-gun replacing it for their extraterrestrial religious text, a text in which ET worships the Almighty Green Slime Supreme Being, Lord of All That Oozes (or in Hollywood fare, “The Blob”).

Okay, so based on religious tolerances (or lack of same) as expressed within and by terrestrial societies, what can we expect from ET? When it comes to a religiously inclined and pushy ET, well that’s hardly ever mentioned as a possible scenario, but ultimately it’s really terrifying, in a potential sort of way. A fanatical religious ET vis-à-vis an invading ET, is perhaps a more likely ET and what we may really need to worry about is that they’ll come in peace alright, but as fervent missionaries to spread the word that their version of a supreme being [the Almighty Green Slime Supreme Being, Lord of All That Oozes] is the only true version of a supreme being and that all of us terrestrial heathen, pagan infidels had better see the error of our untrue faiths and convert to their extraterrestrial theology quick-smart.

More likely as not ET won’t be Jesus-like and certainly won’t allow themselves to be nailed to a cross (or a higher-tech version); they will probably be more along the lines of the Conquistadors or perhaps akin the Inquisition, or even worse Koran-thumping Islamic extremist-types. After all, they have to be very, very strongly motivated to come out to our neck of the boonies, and they are going to want favorable results, or else. All hail the Almighty Great Green Slime Supreme Being, Lord of All That Oozes!

Now here’s a very rough translation and commentary on the first few bars (it’s also an opera) of ET’s “Holy eBook of Slime and Ooze”. It goes something like this:

“Once upon a time the Almighty Great Green Slime Supreme Being, Lord of All That Oozes, ejaculated and gave rise to the Holy Ooze and the Holy Ooze was without form and the Almighty Great Green Slime Supreme Being, Lord of All That Oozes felt that this was how it should be and everything was Almighty fine. And that ended the First Great Cycle of Cycles.

On the Second Great Cycle of Cycles, Ms. Almighty Great Green Slime Supreme Being, Lord of All That Oozes took her less than better half partner, the Almighty Great Green Slime Supreme Being, Lord of All That Oozes to task for creating a Holy Oozy Mess and told her less than better half, the Almighty Great Green Slime Supreme Being, Lord of All That Oozes to clean it up, or else! And so it came to pass that the Almighty Great Green Slime Supreme Being, Lord of All That Oozes swept the Holy Ooze all under the Heavenly Cosmic Carpet. 

But the Almighty Great Green Slime Supreme Being, Lord of All That Oozes wasn’t through with His creation, and under cover of the Cosmic Night, He played with His toy biochemistry set and infused animation into the Holy Ooze that had been swept under the Heavenly Cosmic Carpet. And that was the Third of the Great Cycles.

The animated Holy Ooze multiplied in an Oozy sort of way and expanded outwards, ever outwards from under the Heavenly Cosmic Carpet and the Almighty Great Green Slime Supreme Being, Lord of All That Oozes was Almighty pleased and totally up Himself with His skills. And thus was concluded the Fourth Great Cycle of Cycles. 

On the Fifth Great Cycle of Cycles, Ms. Almighty Great Green Slime Supreme Being, Lord of All That Oozes, totally fed up with her less than better half, packed her Heavenly Duffle Bags and left the Almighty Great Green Slime Supreme Being, Lord of All That Oozes for even greener pastures. She moved in with the step-brother of the Almighty Great Green Slime Supreme Being, Lord of All That Oozes. His name was the Greater Greener Slime Being, who, unfortunately had fallen from Grace [mutiny I believe] and had been stripped of his Almighty Supreme title and status – such are the fates in family disputes and Wars in Heaven between rivals for power.” 

And it goes on and on and on from there, over ten eBook volumes worth that kind of make the Bible read like a short story. But in a bit of a twist, a role reversal, the underdog, the Greater Greener Slime Being ultimately triumphs and comes out on top to become the new Almighty Greater Greener Slime Supreme Being. Well after all the Almighty Great Green Slime Supreme Being, Lord of All That Oozes really was a bit of a twit.

 The former Greater Greener Slime Being and the former Almighty Great Green Slime Supreme Being, Lord of All That Oozes’ Ex – His more than better half – together, it is prophesized, will have a child who ultimately will become the role model for, obviously, “The Son of the Blob”, who is to grow so blobby that His massive gravity will prove enough to cause the Heavenly Cosmic Carpet and all that it contains (life, the universe and everything) to roll up in on itself and turn into a singularity. It will be the End of Days, the Cycles of Cycles – the Big Crunch will have arrived! If I recall correctly, that Last Great Cycle is numbered somewhere over the million mark of all things Cyclic. Amen.

Although you’d hope that advanced alien beings would have long since out-evolved such religious nonsense, that’s not a given. That missionary scenario is even more frightening than them coming here with their ray-guns blasting away IMHO. So if those extraterrestrial evangelists come knocking at your door, with tales about the Holy Ooze, or the Almighty Greater Greener Slime Supreme Being, be afraid, be very afraid!

When Religious Aliens Come Knocking: Part One

Aliens, as in extraterrestrials, come in all manner of shapes and sizes at least according to science fiction authors, TV produces, filmmakers and even scientists. We have to rely on them since we don’t yet have an alien on the slab in the lab for verification. Our potential aliens also have all manner of philosophies and intentions – invasion and sex usually dominate. But what about religion: their existence and impact on our religion and of greater importance, their religion’s impact on us. 

There has been an awful lot of ink spilled over many, many a decade on the question of what the discovery of an advanced extraterrestrial civilization would mean for terrestrial religions, especially the Big Three – Judaism, Christianity and Islam. That’s mainly because the Bible (and associated texts) make no mention of ET, and thus human beings are the one and only apex of God’s creations. Discovery of ET would throw that alleged apex into more than just a bit of theological confusion.

However, theologians tend to make light of this and suggest along the lines that there’s an awful lot of real estate out there, and since God can do whatever He damn well pleases, well maybe He populated some of that real estate with one or more extraterrestrial societies. I mean the Bible doesn’t mention Antarctica or penguins. The discovery of both didn’t upset the religious applecart, so why are aliens relevant to vie for Biblical space and commentary and why should they, if they exist, upset the religious applecart?

In short, one answer boils down to, is everything out there in parallel with everything down here, at least as far as the big three monotheistic faiths go? Do all planets with intelligent aliens have extraterrestrial Adams and Eves that muck up their alien Gardens of Eden and get the boot? Do all alien civilizations have sin, a flood, a Chosen People, a Promised Land, etc? 

Now apparently the biggest of the big theological question is, assuming the existence of ET civilizations, is whether or not Jesus (assuming the reality of a Jesus of course – not a given) visited these worlds and got subjected to the ET equivalent of The Cross. Did Jesus have to hitch a ride on interstellar spaceships in order to get to all those other sinful other-worlds, assuming those other-worlds are sinful other-worlds?  Methinks the questions are as similar to how many angels dance on the head of a pin!

IMHO, the odds that our religious histories in broad-brush form would happen on each and every other-world housing an extraterrestrial civilization is so remote as to not be worthy of even two seconds of pondering. 

Okay, so if UFOs land on the White House lawn tomorrow, or radio astronomers detect obviously artificial radio signals from an extra-solar other-world planet that’s home to ET, big deal. Church attendance will probably not alter greatly, at least after the initial shock. If those of the monotheistic faiths embrace all of humanity as equals, then it’s not a huge step upwards to embracing extra-solar ‘humanity’ – ET – as equals as well. 

But, and this is a very real but, what if our advanced aliens are not just technologically advanced aliens, but theologically  advanced aliens, who in fact have a theology that bears no similarity with any terrestrial theology! Then what? Might ET take a leaf out of our religious histories and violently preach their version of hell, fire and brimstone to us? What leaf you ask? 

The basic reality is that members of the trilogy of major monotheistic religions (and lots of minor ones as well) have in the past wished, and continue to wish, to impose their beliefs by any means fair or foul (usually foul) on anyone and everyone else. If fact, all too often those wishes were turned into reality.

If one had to list all of the atrocities inflicted on various cultures by Christian missionaries, including the abduction and indoctrination of young children, well let’s just say comparisons with the Nazi Third Reich regime wouldn’t be all that inappropriate. From across Africa to the Pacific Islands and points beyond, it was the Christian duty of the faithful to force-feed if necessary their religious doctrines to all those thus far spared monotheism fanaticism. And it wasn’t just a matter of polytheistic to monotheistic conversion, it was the absolute and total destruction of anything and everything part and parcel of their ‘pagan’ traditional beliefs that had to be eliminated, so much so that most of the culture, say of the Aztecs and the Incas, have now been lost forever – thanks due to God, or rather His ever faithful representatives.

Then throw in the Inquisition, the Crusades, and all manner of Holy Wars and God’s Old Testament reign of terror has been taken to heart by the faithful whose duty is to see that it is ‘to be continued’ and on, and on, and on it goes. Your option: be a living Christian; or a dead pagan. Well there’s an exception to that – the last of the Inca emperors was given this option: a relatively quick and easy death as a born-again Christian, or a very slow and very painful death as a pagan. Needless to say Christianity won out yet again. Belief in God can be very persuasive when you’re faced with being burned at the stake as an alternative.  

Albeit more civilized today, the indoctrination goes on. It might be religious fanatics picketing in front of abortion clinics or forcing public schools to delete Darwinism (Darwinian evolution) from their curricula and replace it with Creationism or Intelligent Design (you’d think that had been settled once and for all with the 1925 Scopes Trial). It often takes the form of all those televangelists knocking your socks off and all those religious billboard signs warning you of this, that and the next sinful thing. Then of course there are those ever pestering Bible-pushing Christians knocking at your door, eager beavers telling you how much God loves you, but in return for a donation He’ll love you even more!

But take note, its God the singular, not gods the plural. I mean is it a God / Jesus Bible-thumper who bangs on your door or is it an Osiris / Odin / Quetzalcoatl / Zeus, etc. person who disturbs your peace and quiet, trying to convert you to the wisdom of polytheism? Did I hear you say God / Jesus? I thought so. Despite the fact that the Bible isn’t a legal document like a search warrant or a summons, it nevertheless seems to give Bible-pushers carte blanch to do whatever they please, as long as the Bible tells them it’s okay to do it, like chewing your ear off (not literally of course) with tales of hell, fire and brimstone and trying to scare the shit out of you into making a donation to the cause. 

If there were any polytheistic cultures who tried to ram their gods down the throat of other cultures I’m not aware of them, which is not the same as other cultures assimilating the gods of another culture. As an example, there ultimately proved to be an amalgamation of ancient Greek and Egyptian deities. Ramming has been the ‘divine right’ and privilege of monotheistic cults and examples, including all of the very graphic details, would fill an encyclopaedia. Would aliens perceive their having a ‘divine right’ to ram their theology down our throats? Yes, if our own history is an example. If God is on your side, you can do no wrong!

In the history of our terrestrial civilization, there have been lots and lots of refugees. Many are economic, escaping poverty by chasing that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow away from their homeland where it never rains (thus no rainbow). Some are political. Some are for racial / racism reasons. A fair share of all refugees, past and present, are religious refugees, an obvious example being the Pilgrims that migrated to the United States of America before there was such a name as the United States. So the issue of religious freedom, or freedom from having someone else’s religion rammed down your throat, is not trivial.

To be continued…